Triggered

Someone spoke to me of triggers the other day.

They meant memory triggers.

That experience when something in your current life suddenly flashes connectively to some earlier part of your life that you had not been considering at all . . . and now it is all that you can see.  And then that recalled memory?  Just floods you with power and takes you for a moment out of the moment in which you are living.

Back.

Like the other day . . . I was helping Kallan right the inside-out sleeve of a new sweatshirt, and my fingers lingered for a moment against the downy fluff of the sweatshirt’s reverse.

Lingered.

And connected.

To a memory of sweatshirts given our family by some charitable organization.  A Christmas present.  Several years in a row we received them.  Brand new and brightly colored.  An unimaginable luxury.

I would wear my new sweatshirt repeatedly over the Christmas vacation, filled with delight at its soft feel of downy reverse against my skin.

And I would always want to wear this new lovely shirt on the first day of school after the holiday.  But there was a problem.

The charitable organization who gave us these sweatshirts got them from someone who had been unable to sell them at any price.  Someone who had kept these sweatshirts in storage for a very very long time.  And on the front of each sweatshirt was a large circular sticker, about 4 inches in diameter, which touted the warm fleecy nature of the garment.

But the sticker had been on the shirt for so long?  The adhesive backing had melded with the fabric.  The sticker came off easily, but there was no way at all to get the stickiness out of the shirt.  Ever.

And so, despite washings and wearings and the passage of time . . . there was always a large circular discoloration on the front of the shirt.

To wear this shirt to school would be akin to wearing a target on my chest.

I tried very hard to avoid being a target.

And so I would turn the shirt inside-out, convincing myself it was cuter that way, anyway.  Turned the sticky discolored target in upon my chest.  Wore the lovely fluff on the outside, where I could caress it with my fingertips.  And I would head off to school that first day after vacation, inside-outed and hopeful.

And every year?  The same thing happened.

No one mocked me that day.

But they took note.

Because at school that first day?  Interspersed among the fabulous new outfits my classmates had received as Christmas gifts?  Were a few brightly colored sweatshirted people, all fluffy in reverse.

Our inside-outed hopefulness?

Marked us clearly as the poorest of the poor.

A tragic miscalculation on our part, as we all worked hard to avoid being targets.

But every year, we wore our sweatshirts fluffy-side out and announced our status.

Because we were forever hopeful.

And forever poor.

And forever targets.

Sigh.

Back in the present, Kallan shoves her arms into her shirt with no appreciation whatsoever for the exquisite feel of her garment.

There is no way to make her see what I see.  To feel what I remember.

As I am taken back.

Triggered.

Someone spoke to me the other day of triggers.

They meant memory triggers.

But I was taken back by the word.

To the memory of a gun.

That I had been sent to retrieve.

Who knows what he’ll do!  He says he has a gun.  I think he’s just drinking and pissed but who knows what he will do!  You have to go check on him.  See if you can get the gun.

And so I went.

I know.  I know. Too much to explain now.

I went and sat across the table from this man whose life had just fallen apart.

A friend.

Sat with him as he drank.

And we both considered the gun that lay on the table between us.

A dark gray menacing presence, shimmering with possibility.

Loaded with possibility.

And then I drank as well.

And we talked about the end of things.

Like love.

And hope.

And life.

For a while.

And then he leaned forward and wept into the table and pushed the gun toward me.

But I reached for him instead and in that moment?

He picked up the gun.

There was an instant in which all was light as I realized what might be about to happen.

But he turned it in his hand.

And gave the gun to me.

So heavy.

The air was heavy.

It was hard to breathe.

I held the gun in both hands and my fingertips caressed its smooth polished surfaces.

The curve of the trigger.

Someone spoke to me the other day of triggers.

They meant memory triggers.

But I was taken back by the word.

Triggered.